- We happy? Vincent. We happy? - Yeah, we happy.
[ Laugo Alien at the Range ]
Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am in fact extremely happy to finally have got my hands on a Laugo Alien.
I've been very excited about this pistol for like two years,
and they are low production, it took that long, but I finally have my grubby little mitts on one.
So we've got the whole original Signature case here.
Which means it came with the pistol,
it came with three of the magazines, which are set up with 17 round base plates.
I've got a couple of bottles of lubricant and gun cleaner.
I have a top strap for iron sights, which I am not going to be using today.
And I also have a top strap with a red dot, which we will be using.
Now this also came with a fancy (well, sort of fancy) competition holster here.
But it's right handed only, and I'm left handed, so we won't be using that.
Instead I actually went out, and there is a company that's making holsters for the Laugo
that are essentially the same sort of thing.
It's just a simple Kydex on a Tek-Lok belt thing. [Eagle Works Holsters.]
But they make them left handed, so I now have a left-handed holster for my Alien.
A couple of initial things that I want to point out.
The trigger is fantastic, there are no backup iron sights on the red dot slide,
and the gun is heavier than you would think, it's a very dense pistol.
It weighs more on the belt than I was anticipating.
That weight is a nice thing when you're shooting it,
and it's really not an issue as a competition pistol.
But it's just if you were comparing it to other similar-sized service pistols,
you'll pick it up and go, "Oh wow, that's kind of chunky."
So let's do some shooting. I've got the third magazine already loaded in my pocket.
Alright, this is my second time out with the Laugo.
I was out here out at the range one time before
just to see if it worked before we started doing some filming.
I actually have that video uploaded for patrons, if you're interested in seeing it.
And I learned one important lesson on that first trip.
And that was I am used to holding a pistol like this,
like thumbs high, thumbs forward, a good tactical modern grip.
And as a left hander I cannot do that.
With a right hander it's just fine.
But because I'm left handed, and because the bore axis is so low on this gun
(which is otherwise a good thing), if I do this,
cases hit my thumb coming out, and they will bounce back into the ejection port and jam the gun.
So ... what I'm going to do is like a thumb over thumb grip like this.
So the slide is just this part moving,
I can have contact with the frame here without any trouble.
But I have to keep my thumbs low enough that they are out of the direction of the ejection.
It's a pretty easy gun to shoot with.
It's a ... fun gun to shoot.
We've got a little hostage taker head target there.
And that's a whole magazine already gone.
Oh, this thing is definitely living up to the expectations, the hopes that I had for it.
There are definitely going to be competition shooters
who can handle this a heck of a lot better than I can at this point.
Because ... from talking to other people who've had these longer,
this is a gun that really does benefit the people most
who have the serious like IPSC fast pistol-shooting skills
to deal with things like muzzle climb.
Or to control even more the very little amount of muzzle climb that the gun has to begin with.
So I still have trouble keeping the dot in my sight picture between shots,
that's a practice thing for me. But it's far easier on this than it is on most other red dot pistols.
Of course, part of that is because the dot's fixed to the frame of the gun,
what I've been calling the top strap.
This is what's reciprocating, the dot never moves. Which means a couple of things.
It is easier to keep it in your field of view because it's static.
And it means there's less impact being put on the dot,
because it's not being slammed back and forth under recoil every time you fire a shot.
Notice that we have some big gnarly grip serrations on the slide there.
There's a set on the back which are great when you're using the iron sight top strap.
There's a set in the front, which are the ones that you use
(there we go), when you have the red dot on it.
The toughness there, the reason I had to do that twice is
17 rounds in the magazine puts actually quite a lot of pressure on the top round
that I have to shove back down into the magazine in the process of racking the slide.
One of the concerns about this gun is it getting hot when you put a lot of ammo through it,
it's starting to get a little toasty now.
This is a gas-delayed action very much like the HK P7.
The P7 had the gas piston down here,
and the whole trigger and trigger guard would get really hot.
On this, the hot part is more like the frame up in this area.
So I should be able to shoot a lot longer before being uncomfortable.
Let's see ... just put a couple on the paper.
[Sorry, I thought the camera could see those hits ...]
That's not too bad. By the way, that is the dot adjusted from the factory.
I have not touched the adjustments.
To me that's always a really reassuring sign: if the gun shows up brand new,
and the sights are actually really well regulated on it,
you know someone's actually putting real work into it.
Now for the price tag of this thing they ought to be,
but that doesn't mean that everyone in that situation actually does.
I've got a second steel target out here at about 20 yards
that I should also have no trouble hitting.
And I'm empty again. 17 rounds, but man it goes fast.
Got one more.
I'm using basic el cheapo ammo. One of these magazines was Magtech 115 grain,
the other two are S&B 115 grain.
Once again, because of the mechanics of the gas piston,
it actually ... kind of performs best with relatively inexpensive ammunition.
What you want to avoid are hand loads that are done with the smallest amount of powder possible.
You want a normal amount of actual gun powder in the loading
so that it generates a normal volume of gas.
Because it's that gas generated upon firing that actually ... delays opening of the pistol.
So if you try to ... like super-economise your super-duper OCD hand loads,
you may actually start having some problems with the pistol,
with the slide cycling too fast and potentially battering itself.
With just basic, cheap, readily available, light-ball ammo it's running great.
Now I'm going to get cocky and try it one handed.
Now I'm going to get really cocky.
Alright, that's pushing the envelope because I can see my dot going like this as my hand wobbles.
But you know what? We had to do this at Desert Brutality.
And I pulled it off there, so I should be able to pull it off here.
I guess that works, I'll take that.
Yeah, I felt that one bounce off my thumb, I have to remember - thumbs down.
... In fact, you can see it right there, it in fact bounced a case back into the ejection port.
You right handers don't have to worry about that.
But it is ... one of those unintended consequences of having a very low bore axis.
And now I've double fed myself.
The solution for that problem is take the magazine out first,
then clear all the stray ammo.
Alright, thumbs down
I really like this thing.
In fact coming back from Finnish Brutality, I had been using a really nice double-stack 9mm 1911
with a wonderful trigger, good iron sights, it was a great gun.
And ... I want a gun with a red dot for a competition pistol,
and normally that means a Glock.
That BUL Armory isn't set up with a red dot.
This thing, to my mind, ought to be like the perfect competition pistol for me,
if it is durable ... enough to survive events like Desert Brutality and Finnish Brutality.
And the problem is I don't think anyone's going to actually find out.
Because this thing's like $5,000 and nobody out there who gets one
is going to be willing to like deliberately risk damaging it.
So I'm going to. We're going to find out if this will handle the dust,
the water, the ice, the mud, the snow, the crap of brutality matches.
And we'll be doing that over a series of I don't even know how many videos yet.
But I'm going to come up with a bunch of awful things to do to it,
and we'll see if it survives.
And if it continues to run.
And I really hope it does, because I would love to have full faith and confidence in this
to handle not just the square range and obliterating targets very rapidly,
but also handling the moon dust of the desert,
and the mosquito-ridden disgusting mud of Finland.
So stick around, hopefully you guys enjoyed this video,
and I think there will be some really cool stuff to come.
A huge thanks to Laugo for sending me this. Full disclosure, I didn't pay for this.
That's part of the reason that I'm willing to do horrible, horrible things to it.
They sent me one gratis.
It was actually really cool, I met the chief designer at Shot Show way back in 2019,
and ... we had a fun time chatting.
And ... I've been excited to see the pistol ever since then.
So I get nothing from Laugo on this,
frankly, they can't make the pistols fast enough to supply the demand as it is.
So I don't think there's really any ... conflict of interest going on.
Just I want to see if I can actually use this thing all the time, so let's find out.
Thanks for watching.